Fats are not your enemy - Macronutrients

01:14Eugene Madondo
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How many times do you hear people complaining about eating
fatty foods and blaming eating foods with fat for their weight problems? Others
even go as far as trying to get rid of fat from their diet, not realizing that
fat is not their enemy and that yes fat does lead them to becoming obese but
that fat also has some vital functions in our bodies.

The most common mistake that people make is to assume that
all fat is the same, that it is all bad for you. That is not true; the truth is
there are many fats that are very good for you commonly referred to as the good
fats and there are many more fats that are bad for you commonly referred to you
as “bad fats”. There are 3 kinds of fats and I will start off by telling you
about the “bad Fats” which are 2/3 of all kinds of fats, saturated fats and
trans fats. An example of a saturated
fat is butter saturated fats are usually found in animal products like meat and
some examples of trans fats or where they are found is margarine and cookies
and other foods made using hydrogenated oils.

I have mentioned 2 types of oils that are bad for you
already above, trans fats and saturated fats which contribute to your bodies
bad cholesterol. The third types of fats however are the “good fats”, the
unsaturated fats which are found in nuts, fish, olive oil, vegetable oil and so
on.

Some benefits of fats are that they are used as a source of
energy by the body especially if you are very active, that is why you find that
active people have less fat because they burn it as energy during their
workouts or whichever activities they are involved in. Fats assist in the absorption
of some micronutrients (vitamins) by our bodies. Fats help with our development and growth,
fats play a role in brain development and blood clothing. Fat also plays a role
in making you feel full and could actually prevent you from over eating. Fat
provides 9 calories per gram, higher than every other macronutrient; this can
be good or bad for you. If you eat too much fat this means you consume more calories
so you get fatter but energy wise this is good especially if you are active,
because fat does not get used up as quickly or as easily as carbohydrates as
energy the body fat that is stored in your body as energy (more long term
source).

Some fats are good for you as I mentioned above but even
good nutrients are not god for you if you consume too much of them, they will
make you gain weight. The trick is not to restrict one nutrient or the other,
we need all nutrients to be healthy therefore we need to have a diet that
includes a balance of fats, proteins and carbohydrates as well as
micronutrients if we want to be healthy. People think eating fat makes them fat
but it’s actually over eating, even if they ate only carbohydrates they would
still get fat if they were eating more than they needed and they would not
develop properly and have health problems because of the lack of other
nutrients that are needed by the body.

Just another fitness junkie on my own fitness journey trying to share my experiences and the experiences of others, in the hopes that it will help/motivate others to start their own journeys be it weight loss, general fitness or muscle gain.